Page 29 of Guardian of Exile

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mary snapped.

“Destroying your shit,” Nyx answered. “Because you’re right—neither of us is going to torture you for information. But since Evra says all of this”—she gestured to indicate the totality of the shop’s contents—“is dangerous, I don’t really feel bad about obliterating things in it until you feel like talking.”

Nyx released her tight rein on the Harvester and it gulped the other two items down. This time, she was ready for the surge as it finished consuming them, and she held it at bay. Scanning the store carefully, she selected ten more items and let the Harvester call them to rise from their resting places and come to hover near it.

“Feel like talking yet?” Nyx asked. When Mary didn’t answer, Nyx let another item flow into the Harvester. Then another, and another, and⁠—

“You can’t keep this up for long. No magic is infinite.”

Nyx laughed, because keeping on wasn’t the problem—stopping was. Since nothing had the ring of derangement quite like the truth, Nyx gave it to her. “I could swallow this whole planet and keep going. So what’s it going to be?”

Mary blanched. But she didn’t speak. Nyx relaxed her grip and the Harvester ingested the other shop pieces hanging before it. Stopping it from inhaling more was like trying to hold on to the lead of a horse that had decided to bolt—if their training kicked in and they halted when the lead rope pulled tight, great. If they decided “fuck training” and you were determined to hold on anyway, you better be wearing a good pair of gloves and be prepared to get dragged.

The Harvester pulled tight, stopped, bolted again, pulled tight, stopped. Nyx felt its indecision and gave it a hard mental yank. Its spin slowed as it sullenly acquiesced, but not before another twenty items rose off their shelves.

“Fine,” Mary spat. “What do you want to know?”

“We are looking for a Shaman,” Evra said.

Mary gave a derisive snort. “What? An Indian shaman? Smoke and chanting, that kind of shaman? Why the hell are you in Manhattan?”

“No,” Nyx said, “not an indigenous spirit communicator.” She thought the word for Tobi and others like him probably translated to Shaman in English because they were healers, and because talking with the Congregation could probably be classified as talking with spirits.

Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, was I not politically correct enough for you?”

Just for that, Nyx let the Harvester eat another two shop pieces. “You would think of this person as a miracle healer. I’m talking about the sort of person who can heal a gut wound in a matter of minutes and fix your great aunt Celia’s incurable cancer.”

“You’re talking about a pipe dream,” Mary answered, but she didn’t sound particularly surprised by the request. As if someone else had made it of her before.

Nyx fed another piece of inventory to the Harvester.

“Would you quit that?” Mary snapped. “Fine. I know who you’re talking about, but it won’t do you any good. He doesn’t help people like you.”

“People like me, meaning?”

“You don’t look like you’re dying.”

Nyx shrugged. “That’s not your problem. Where do I find him?”

“You don’t. You find his people, and if they think you’re deserving, they’ll take you to him.”

“And how do we find his people?” Evra asked coolly.

Mary ground her teeth. “There’s usually a flyer. It’ll be for something else—music lessons, a craft clinic, anything—and somewhere buried in it will be a modified caduceus.”

“A what?” Evra asked, at the same time Nyx asked, “Modified how?”

Mary smiled. “The top of the staff is a skull and crossbones. Rumor has it, he might heal you…but he might kill you, too. Find the flyer and call the number on it.”

“Anything else we should know?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Then there’s just one final thing.” Nyx used the blade of Veritas to scrape a little blood from the cut on Mary’s neck. “Did you lie to me about anything?”

“Why would I lie? You’ve already destroyed six months’ worth of my income.”

“Yes or no answers only please—did you lie to me about anything?”